Earlier this month, the American Advertising Federation’s Metro Phoenix branch announced this year’s ADDY winners, which honor the best in local advertising campaigns. One young ADDY winner caught our eye: Raven Cruz, a 20-year-old senior at the Art Institute of Phoenix, won best in show in the student category for…
Tempe’s Mill Avenue and Scottsdale’s Marshall Way are about to get a second dose of public art eye candy. The second cycle of IN FLUX — a program that commissions, promotes and enables the installation of temporary art in and among vacant and active storefronts — is in full gear…
If you’ve never been up to the rooftop patio or the eighth floor balcony of the Security Building, at 234 N. Central Ave. in downtown Phoenix, these next few months might hold your last chance.The Phoenix Urban Research Lab, an arm of the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts…
Summer’s around the corner, which means there’s plenty of time to get creative (and finish a few projects) before the heat sets in. Lucky you, there happen to be a handful of great opportunities for local artists to have their work displayed and recognized. From paintings to puppets, here are…
Matthew Moore grew up in Waddell, Arizona, on his family’s farm that’s been around since the 1920s. Much of the local artist’s work is influenced by the landscape he remembered from growing up and the changes to that landscape since his family began losing the land to development. Moore documents…
Typography fans are in for a treat: AIGA is hosting two events next week that celebrate the ol’ printing press. On Monday, AIGA’s monthly FilmBar series offers a screening of Typeface, a 2009 documentary by Justine Nagan. The film follows the Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum (http://woodtype.org/), a Wisconsin…
In the back of the exhibition space for “And the Land Grew Quiet: New Work by Matthew Moore” sits a crazy one-and-a-half-scale stud-skeleton house. Built askew and appearing to be sinking into the ground, the house is surreal. Walk through its beams and a disorienting sense of vertigo might knock…
On the opening night of Eye Lounge’s annual fundraiser show, art community members mingled and snatched up small-scale works donated by local artists. The show’s an opportunity for the Eye Lounge to raise money, for collectors to snatch up pieces they recognize (each is signed by the artist on the…
It was a humid, soggy weekend for Art Detour 24. And the weather was as unpredictable as the artwork. The weekend, officially organized by Downtown non-profit Artlink, is two days of studio tours and gallery openings (we’d argue that it should have included the night of Third Friday, but more…
It’s about time Phoenix sees some serious mural love. In the interest of giving credit to their artists and because we’re losing track of the times we’ve said, “Woah, when did that go up?”, we bring you Mural City, a series on the murals springing up around town — their artists,…
In the six months since the Crescent Ballroom opened, the renowned concert venue has hosted fashion shows, comedy gigs, dance nights, and (of course) plenty of concerts. As for art shows? Eh…not so much.That all changes starting tonight as painter Hugo Medina, Xico, and Cuervo Studios unveil “Celebrating Beauty,” a…
Christina Pruitt says that the idea for her latest exhibition, Swept, came from growing up in a culture of façades. The local artist was raised in West Texas. When she moved to Phoenix and joined Eye Lounge, she had the opportunity to work auto-biographically for the first time. In Texas…
It must have been intimidating. Less than six weeks on the job and Sean Malone, CEO of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, had to announce that he was installing solar panels at Taliesin West, making it one of the first structures in the National Register of Historic Places and on…
When Legends Entertainment District announced it would be unveiling a “community-building six-story mural” on the west-facing wall of the Luhrs Building, we grabbed our cameras. The historic 10-story building at 11 West Jefferson Street opened its doors in 1924 and its red-brick exterior has gone virtually untouched since. A mural…
If you’re planning to head down Roosevelt Street tomorrow, make sure you plan a few extra minutes to look around. More than 800 volunteers will be painting murals, landscaping lots, and building tables as part of a revitalization project and partnership between Citigroup, HandsOn Greater Phoenix, and Roosevelt Row.Volunteers have been…
Public hangings are back in vogue. At least the one hosted by Art Detour, the much-beleaguered annual tour of galleries and artist studios that this weekend is celebrating its 24th anniversary.The Art Detour Public Hanging will feature 40-odd artists, both amateur and professional, whose work will be hung at Artlink’s…
The Longhouse Studios has been on Roosevelt Row for a while (by local gallery standards). The historic house opened as a gallery in 2003 and currently exhibits local artists Jason Lee Davis, Andi Davis, Jessi Davis. Rick Toerne, Lesli Englert Yazzie, Aubrie Ganem, Jasmine Cook, Matt Yazzie, and Lori Englert.And…
Chris Bianco’s mom used to take him to antique and thrift stores all the time when he was little to look for frames for his father’s artwork. He hated it.Growing up, Bianco was surrounded by art. His mother, Francesca, was a designer who created everything from wedding veils to watercolors…
If his vibrant paintings and colorful songwriting is any indication, the mind of Cris Kirkwood is a lively place indeed. Just ask the 51-year-old musician and artist himself, who tends to live in his head often.That’s not a slight against Kirkwood — a founding member of highly influential local rock…
